Leverage Oneshot: The Doors of Perception
Apr. 20th, 2015 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesterladyficTitle: The Doors of Perception
by Jesterlady
Rating: PG
Summary: Interrogator: You ever count them...You know. The people you've killed? Eliot's answer comes through on the coms.
Disclaimer: I don't own Leverage. Some lines are from the show. The title is by William Blake. The timeline might be a little iffy here, but just go with it!
The Doors of Perception
Interrogator: You ever count them?
Eliot: What?
Interrogator: You know. The people you've killed? Give me a ballpark. It's got to be a big number, right?
Eliot: You think asking me about my past is gonna open up old wounds? Maybe put me off balance a little? Make me easier to break?
Interrogator: I'm just trying to get to know you better. Why does that question make you so nervous? Is that what all this is for you? Are you trying to punish yourself for the things you've done? I think that's it. I think the reason why you won't give me your word and walk out that door is 'cause you think you deserve to be here.
Eliot: What do you want to know? Names? Dates? Locations? You want to know what food was on their breath? Their eyes – what color their eyes were? You want to know the last words they spoke? You want to know which ones deserved it. Or, better yet, the ones that didn't? Do you want to know which ones begged? Do you know why I remember these things?
Interrogator: I don't know.
Eliot: You don't know? 'Cause I can't forget. So there's nothing you can do, no punishment you can hand out that's worse than what I live with every day. So, to answer your question, no. No, I haven't counted. I don't need to.
The taste of wine was heavy in his mouth as Hardison shut his door and prepared for whatever crazy antics his new frat brothers were going to try on him next. He dropped his bag on the floor and let himself sit on the edge of his bed. He had a lot of work to do but the wine was making him sleepy. He’d almost convinced himself to take a short cat nap before he had to get back over to Nate’s when quiet voices cut over his com. That in itself was familiar to him now; the voices of the team in his head were almost a part of his own mind.
It was Eliot and the interrogator that Hardison privately thought had about as much chance of breaking Eliot as Hardison had at taking down a room full of guys using his pinky finger, and not by pushing buttons on gadgets he’d invented.
Hardison chuckled a bit, waiting for Eliot to freeze the man out with more of that studied contempt that sometimes made Hardison want to smack Eliot upside the head.
But that wasn’t what happened, at least not for Hardison. Eliot’s contempt and control were there, sure, and his disdain for this man’s attempt at psychological warfare, but Eliot wasn’t refusing to answer, he was using the truth as his own weapon.
There was nothing scarier than the skeletons in people’s closets, that was something Hardison was sure of, but he’d always put in the back of his mind that Eliot’s skeletons were scarier than anybody else’s. It made it possible for him to be friends with the man, to tease him, to trust him with his life, to treat him like a grouchy kitty cat rather than the cold-souled tiger that Eliot probably actually was.
Hardison found his breath catching as he listened, not even trying to block out the chatter the way he sometimes would. Eliot’s words dripped through his mind, barely being understood, because they were forcing him to remember, to remember being shoved into a swimming pool and the water filling his entire field of vision and the first time since the beginning that he’d wondered if Eliot could be trusted.
There had been a quiet anger in Hardison then and he’d seethed all the way back to the team, ratting Eliot out the first chance he got because he’d been actually terrified of the man that he treated like a brother and yet apparently didn’t know at all. Nothing in his very thorough, and he means very very thorough, background check on Eliot had revealed any kind of connection to Damien Moreau. The very fact that he hadn’t known any of it going in, that Eliot hadn’t had a single tell that gave him away the long months they’d tried to take down Moreau, that Eliot had just let him flounder in the water, that there was something he couldn’t find out, that maybe this was the end of their team for good, was enough to make Hardison furious.
But, of course, that wasn’t what had happened. Eliot had come through for them, protecting them in his own way, thinking some kind of logic through his Neanderthal brain, and Hardison had put it aside, had gotten through a few nightmares of drowning, and had trusted Eliot more than ever. Then this had to happen.
Except this time the reminder of Eliot’s past crimes weren’t making Hardison afraid and angry for himself, but on behalf of Eliot. He shuddered because he could just imagine the way Eliot was looking at his would be interrogator. Hardison knew that voice, knew that dead confidence, and he knew the lack of expression Eliot would have on his face. They weren’t the marks of a man who knew joy, but they were the marks of acceptance and some kind of intent to move on. Hardison wouldn’t want to live like that, but Eliot had to, and now he was exposing that to the team, whether he’d intended to or not.
Hardison found himself clutching his bedsheet and looked down, realizing his entire hand was seizing up.
Eliot’s words were brief and when they were over he was escorted back to his cell and there was silence on the coms. Hardison still sat there, not moving, waiting for something. Finally it came, an annoyed huff as Eliot shifted on his bunk and then, only then, could Hardison move, somehow reassured by the familiar sound of Eliot being irritable.
But it was still a long time before he could sleep, no matter how tired he’d been, a long time before he got back to Nate’s, no matter how urgent the job. He didn’t want the reminders that Eliot was different than Hardison’s perceptions of him. He wanted the Eliot that only pretended he couldn’t be tamed, his real Eliot; though Eliot was always exactly himself somehow, no matter how he acted or who he was pretending to be.
Hardison knew that his Eliot, that one would be writhing in annoyance that the rest of the team had heard what he’d said, and as much as Hardison didn’t want that other Eliot coming out, maybe it was time he gave him a chance so his Eliot didn’t have to feel so bad when he did.
***
Parker had a job to do and when that was the case, she focused on it, blocking everything else out. If she let anything distract her, she might not finish the job and that was unacceptable. The job was who she was, a thief, and the best there was. It was the only thing she could hold on to with certainty.
Parker didn’t listen to half of what was said on the coms and what she did listen to, she barely understood unless it related to the jobs. Sometimes she thought the others were speaking in some kind of code and sometimes she wondered why they were talking about such important secrets so openly, even if the coms were only shared by the five of them.
She liked the times when they weren’t on a job and Hardison’s voice would talk to her before she went to sleep; he would just ramble on about things she had no clue about, but it was soothing and she always slept better. She liked it when Eliot was out food shopping and used the coms to ask her which type of cereal she wanted and didn’t she want to learn how to eat something that didn’t make her act like a five year old. She liked it when Sophie was out somewhere and found something she was so excited about she used the coms to point it out to Parker, like Parker actually cared about what kind of shoes Sophie had found and what a good deal they were. Even if that was the case, Parker would just take them, because good things were there to be possessed, not bought. She even liked it when Nate was down at the bar and started talking to people like they were marks, forgetting he wasn’t on a job because he saw everything as a job.
But when Parker was on a job, the coms were only there as a tool to be used, so she didn’t understand why she couldn’t block out what Eliot was saying. His words pounded inside her head, making it hurt. She didn’t like the implications that Eliot was hurt from his past. Everyone had a past and she knew Eliot’s was likely to be more interesting than the rest of theirs in some ways, but he’d asked her not to ask about it and so she didn’t. Everyone had a right to privacy and to know things at their own pace. Parker lived that way because if she didn’t she would explode. Eliot had his own method of dealing with things and he was just always Eliot, just grumpy Eliot who made her food and hit things that tried to hurt her. She didn’t understand why his past had to make a difference at all.
But it made a difference to him, she could tell, because the tone he was using wasn’t the one he used when he was deflecting Hardison’s invasive questions or Nate’s accusations or Sophie’s gentle prying or her own cluelessness. It was just Eliot, doing what he had to do on the job, which was protect them. She knew he would be mad they were hearing what he was saying, but he was still saying it because it was right for their job.
Eliot knew when the right thing was the wrong thing, or when the way to get something done was the wrong thing and that actually made it right. He was never anything but himself, even if he never shared anything. She knew that and accepted that about him even as he accepted certain things about her. They were the same only sometimes. They were very different the rest of the time, but maybe because he was so far down the road ahead of her. He’d learned the things she hadn’t yet, he’d made peace with his past and she was still trying to understand what hers meant to her.
But when she was confused or scared about who she was or thought she’d never be able to figure anything out, Eliot’s voice telling her that what they were didn’t make them bad, it just made them them, was always what got her through those moments. She’d never been able to get a man home to his wife, but she’d done something else and because she and Eliot were alive they could do something else for other people over and over, and that’s what made them special.
Maybe what Eliot was saying was more than he usually said and maybe it meant something hugely important, but Parker didn’t know what that was. The important thing to her was, it was okay not to know, simply because she was who she was and Eliot was who he was and the team was what they were and she liked things that way.
When she slipped into Eliot’s cell, he wasn’t asleep and he didn’t look at her. That was okay, too, and Parker gave him a jacket, called him a baby, and slipped out again, his rough chuckle echoing behind her.
***
Sophie was still at Nate’s, attempting to explain to herself why she should leave. The longer she and Nate danced around each other while dancing into each other, the more frustrated she began to feel with her life choices. The two of them had come so far and yet it appeared that they were always still at the beginning, still in some kind of chase.
She watched him study the monitors and washed the wine glasses, telling herself to just go and get some sleep. That’s when Eliot started speaking, that’s when Sophie forgot all about Nate really, but it was all part of the same problem.
Sophie was a part of this team, sometimes against her own will. She had tried to leave, she’d tried to treat them like other groups she’d worked with, but there was something different here and it had ensnared her as easily as she’d ensnared any mark she’d ever grifted. She was in the ultimate con perhaps, a woman aware of the fact she was being manipulated, but still somehow unable to disengage from the trap.
There were good parts about being a part of this team. There were people walking around who knew her real name, who knew who she was better than she herself sometimes. That was a true rarity in the life of the grifter and something she’d struggled with over and over. Now, if it were not for the lingering issue of Nate, she’d be almost truly content. There was something there though, something unnamed and unnoticed most of the time, that came from them being who they were, criminals.
It influenced every step of their lives, every part of their connection to each other. It wasn’t just that they broke the law together on an almost daily basis, it was the fact that the only time they’d all tried to leave each other, they’d each come back to the unfinished con, back to each other. None of them could leave.
She’d long ago decided that was a good thing, even if there was so much dysfunction among them. They’d created their own world, one that each of them needed and understood better than any other part of their life. In fact, their lives before were used simply as tools for the here and now, because the here and now was where they wanted to be. She recalled Eliot saying that he would leave the team when he chose to leave it; yet he hadn’t, not even when she’d conned her own crew, his unforgiveable sin.
It had taken him a long time to forgive her fully. Maybe forgiveness wasn’t it. Perhaps it was trust that was the most important thing she’d lost from him. Possibly it took her being broken and running from them that had given him the insight he needed to welcome her back and work so long and hard with her to get Nate out of prison. She was glad, no matter the reason. Eliot was the part of the group she depended on the most, not just to save her life when the marks got dangerous, but to support her and to give practical advice when the rest of them were too emotionally invested and to wrangle Nate when Sophie couldn’t.
Eliot had been the person she trusted the least when they first came together, but he was now the person she trusted the most. Parker was a loose cannon even on her good days, Hardison was hyperactive and unfocused, and Nate, well, Nate was a whole different story. Eliot was their rock, the shelter that kept them from going insane. She could comfort the daily woes and understand the emotions, but Eliot could keep them going from day to day and he did, without question.
So it hurt Sophie to hear him being hurt, because he was. Yes, he sounded stoic and confident and matter of fact on the coms, but she knew it hurt him to remember his past. It was a good reminder for her, if nothing else, because he was so often stolid and calm, she forgot his past. Yet he had to control himself, every day he was the beast he kept locked up inside and it would never go away. He’d told her that before and she’d tried her best not to forget it, but he was so good at acting like it wasn’t there, that it took moments like this one for her to remember truly how much he carried around with him on a daily basis.
Eliot scared her sometimes. Even when she was only acting in a con that he was a brute with savage instincts, she could feel how dangerous he was. She never wanted his anger or vengeance directed at her. His every day ire was something laughable, something that Hardison and Parker poked at with a stick and Nate and she deliberately aggravated, but his true anger, like when she’d betrayed him, was something she was truly scared of.
Despite his constant grouchiness, Eliot was always there and reliable, keeping them safe. Who supported the supporter? Well, Sophie often felt like she carried the weight of them all, but she knew that wasn’t actually the way it was. There wasn’t much she could or would change about the way their group operated, but she made a mental note to support Eliot more when he voiced his opinion and to never show him that she was afraid. He deserved more from her now. He’d proven she was an object of his protection and her first duty should be to be his emotional health. He’d made peace with his past, but there were some things no one could come away from unscathed and what was Sophie if not exactly what anyone needed, even Eliot.
***
It took a lot to break Nate’s concentration. He ignored everything most of the time, his own health, his teammates, everything. He was busy, he was important, he was doing something that needed to be done. Their mark was a sick and twisted, self-important upstart who had to be taken down and Nate would do it any way that he could. He’d put both Hardison and Eliot in harm’s way and he wouldn’t regret it, he couldn’t, not if it got the job done.
Nate had too many regrets as it was, he had to be hard and ruthless against actual evil or he’d spent all of his time regretting, in a downward spiral that would drag everyone around him down with him. So he was relentless and he was merciless and he was sometimes even cruel to the people he loved.
He could admit that, to himself if not to them. He did love them, he did appreciate what they were to him, but it wasn’t something he could vocalize or even come close to showing through his actions. Except perhaps to Sophie, she was, as always, his Achilles heel.
Nate sat down on the couch, rubbing his eyes, listening to the rather soothing sounds of Sophie washing up from her impromptu wine tasting. His brain was still working, but he appreciated the slight break. It was only that reason that caused him to catch what was going on.
Eliot was breaking the interrogator. It was as simple as that. In the situation that Eliot was in, he had to use what he had to be the best unbreakable prisoner there was, and he had a lot. He had more than Nate could even imagine. Nate didn’t think anything sentimental or feel worried about Eliot, this was Eliot’s job and Nate expected everyone on his team to do just that.
But Nate hadn’t always been a heartless bastard. True, he’d always been determined and stubborn, but those weren’t the same things. The combination just made him more dangerous when he wasn’t holding himself in. He could feel emotions, could get overwhelmed, could break down, could make bad choices, and could sacrifice himself for others. He could do all of those things, but they were often pieces on his mental chess board, calculated risks.
This time, Eliot’s words sank in deep and Nate thought about what they meant. They meant that Eliot trusted him to see the more ruthless sides of himself, the sides that he kept hidden and locked away from the others with an obsessive passion. Circumstances had led Nate to be there when Eliot had saved him and the Italian, circumstances only, but Nate wondered if Eliot would have been able to do what he’d done if one of the others had been there. Maybe he still could have saved them, but maybe he wouldn’t have bothered saving himself in the process.
It was something Nate pondered sometimes, late at night when his brain was tired of self-flagellation. Eliot had more reason than most of them to be afraid of what he was capable of and that kind of single-minded purpose could lead to a lot of self-hatred, a lot of being unable to look at yourself in the mirror. Instead it presented as a restless quality in Eliot, something he kept controlled, but something he used to lash out with, to keep people away from what he didn’t want them to see. Something about that experience with Moreau had changed Eliot and Nate knew it was because there was some kind of acceptance, some kind of closure of the evil in his past.
But it had taken evil to accomplish that, it had taken cold-blooded murder, and…it had been done for Nate. Nate took that burden and he kept Eliot’s secret from the rest of the team because it had been done for Nate. That was something he could not fully understand, could never repay, but he accepted as necessary and important. It was always hanging in the air between him and Eliot and their interactions were charged with the knowledge of it.
When Eliot challenged Nate, Nate always heard words that said he owed him his life and the lives of all the men Eliot had killed on his behalf and Nate hated that sometimes. Out of all of them, Nate was the one Eliot shouldn’t have had to save, but he’d done it anyway. Eliot was filthy with wrong-doing, with a past so murky Nate didn’t ever want to know half of it, but Nate felt blackened and wrong next to Eliot and that just didn’t sit right with him. It made him hard on him, made him ignore Eliot’s sage advice, made him lash out at him, made him push him away, but it made him somehow so inexplicably grateful at the same time.
Most of the time Nate wouldn’t even bother thinking about this, but Eliot’s measured and careful words, somehow so open, pushed past his defenses and he bowed his head in his hands for one moment and just let himself be grateful that he knew this killer, this dark soul, who somehow made him lighter, even when he didn’t want to be.
When he looked up again, Sophie was staring at him with an all too knowing look in her eyes and a similar weight of guilt slumped on her shoulders.
***
The situation had not been ideal, not ideal at all. Eliot had brooded about it on his bunk for a while and he’d stiffened with dread when Parker came into his cell. She’d treated what happened with behavior that was so Parker-like that he’d had a moment of relief, but when she’d gone, he went back to dreading the moment when he’d have to walk out of the cell and rejoin his team.
He’d been almost glad for no real reason, as he lay chattering, that Hardison was being himself and that everyone was acting normal on the coms, but the knowledge of what he’d said, of what he’d let them see, kept coming back to his mind.
See, they couldn’t see, they should not see. They were the ones he didn’t want anywhere near his past. He could be violent, he could dish out damage and take their pain and he could growl and be bad-tempered and he could show marks every bit of rage he possessed, but his team, they could not see or it would break him. They had to be protected from him. He was closer to them than anyone on the planet and he loved them more than he’d ever loved anything, but if they ever got past that one point, he wouldn’t be able to keep them from feeling the pain and it was his job to keep that from them, to save them from knowing.
Sometimes there were moments they had to know, things from his past he couldn’t keep them from, pain he had to dredge up to help them in the moment. Nate held on to Moreau for Eliot and it ate away at him, Eliot could tell. There was a certain memory from Kiev that had been mentally transferred to Hardison after he’d been buried alive. Sophie kept the pain Amy’s marriage and his own abandonment of her had caused in him and by him. Parker, she had so many little things, so many little nightmares, all creating one huge mess. These moments were in the way he treated them, the words he said, and the memories he shared because they were already on the table.
But he didn’t want them to have to carry anything. It was his burden, his penance, and he could never forget any of it, could never really share the load. It was simply there. He’d come to his peace about it, a version of peace anyway. He wasn’t under any illusions about what kind of man he was. He was a bad man, but he would do good things and he would do bad things for good people. They were his good people and the one selfish and weak thing he allowed in himself was to not want to see the way they could look at him, the way his marks had always had to look at him in the end.
He didn’t worry about it for long. The con went on, the interrogator tried new things. Then Hardison was taken and that was something completely unacceptable. Hardison was one of the most annoying things in Eliot’s life, but he was one of his people, his very precious people, and Eliot freely added to his list of sins in order to find out where he was. In the end, Parker saved him and Eliot just kept participating in the con, but eventually the moment came when he had to go back home.
Eliot opened the door and everyone looked up. He was sweaty and his head ached and he had plenty of grime and dried blood under his fingernails. He had to look awful. Sophie smiled at him, Nate nodded, Parker ignored him, crunching on something sugary, and Hardison called for him to come and bandage his wounds. Yet there was something in their eyes, he could see the awareness of his confession in their faces. There was also something like guilt, like pity, like resolution. That untwisted something inside his gut, but he didn’t want or need those things. There was nothing they could change that they weren’t already doing. He felt shame, yet stood resolutely and almost proudly in front of them.
“I’m only going to say this once,” he said firmly. “There are some things Hardison can’t hack, things Parker can’t steal, there are people Sophie can’t grift, and times Nate wasn’t chasing me. Who I am is who I am and our crew is what matters. Protecting you is my job, so don’t even think about trying to protect me. Got it?”
There was a single moment of tense silence before Hardison, as usual, broke it.
“You think I wanna do what you do?” Hardison asked. “Look at my ribs, man, look at my poor ribs. Ain’t no way I’m touching your job with any length of pole.”
“Why would I want to be an Eliot?” asked Parker with genuine confusion.
“Nice try, sweetie,” was Sophie’s response.
Nate didn’t say anything, but he lifted his glass of something that was terrible for him to drink in a silent salute.
They were idiots, every one of them, but they were his crew. Eliot went upstairs and took a shower and, when he felt somewhat clean again, put his spare clothes on and came back downstairs where everyone was getting ready to go back to campus to watch Zilgram get taken away. He took over taping Hardison’s ribs, mentally thinking about what he was going to make them all for dinner once they got home.
by Jesterlady
Rating: PG
Summary: Interrogator: You ever count them...You know. The people you've killed? Eliot's answer comes through on the coms.
Disclaimer: I don't own Leverage. Some lines are from the show. The title is by William Blake. The timeline might be a little iffy here, but just go with it!
The Doors of Perception
Interrogator: You ever count them?
Eliot: What?
Interrogator: You know. The people you've killed? Give me a ballpark. It's got to be a big number, right?
Eliot: You think asking me about my past is gonna open up old wounds? Maybe put me off balance a little? Make me easier to break?
Interrogator: I'm just trying to get to know you better. Why does that question make you so nervous? Is that what all this is for you? Are you trying to punish yourself for the things you've done? I think that's it. I think the reason why you won't give me your word and walk out that door is 'cause you think you deserve to be here.
Eliot: What do you want to know? Names? Dates? Locations? You want to know what food was on their breath? Their eyes – what color their eyes were? You want to know the last words they spoke? You want to know which ones deserved it. Or, better yet, the ones that didn't? Do you want to know which ones begged? Do you know why I remember these things?
Interrogator: I don't know.
Eliot: You don't know? 'Cause I can't forget. So there's nothing you can do, no punishment you can hand out that's worse than what I live with every day. So, to answer your question, no. No, I haven't counted. I don't need to.
The taste of wine was heavy in his mouth as Hardison shut his door and prepared for whatever crazy antics his new frat brothers were going to try on him next. He dropped his bag on the floor and let himself sit on the edge of his bed. He had a lot of work to do but the wine was making him sleepy. He’d almost convinced himself to take a short cat nap before he had to get back over to Nate’s when quiet voices cut over his com. That in itself was familiar to him now; the voices of the team in his head were almost a part of his own mind.
It was Eliot and the interrogator that Hardison privately thought had about as much chance of breaking Eliot as Hardison had at taking down a room full of guys using his pinky finger, and not by pushing buttons on gadgets he’d invented.
Hardison chuckled a bit, waiting for Eliot to freeze the man out with more of that studied contempt that sometimes made Hardison want to smack Eliot upside the head.
But that wasn’t what happened, at least not for Hardison. Eliot’s contempt and control were there, sure, and his disdain for this man’s attempt at psychological warfare, but Eliot wasn’t refusing to answer, he was using the truth as his own weapon.
There was nothing scarier than the skeletons in people’s closets, that was something Hardison was sure of, but he’d always put in the back of his mind that Eliot’s skeletons were scarier than anybody else’s. It made it possible for him to be friends with the man, to tease him, to trust him with his life, to treat him like a grouchy kitty cat rather than the cold-souled tiger that Eliot probably actually was.
Hardison found his breath catching as he listened, not even trying to block out the chatter the way he sometimes would. Eliot’s words dripped through his mind, barely being understood, because they were forcing him to remember, to remember being shoved into a swimming pool and the water filling his entire field of vision and the first time since the beginning that he’d wondered if Eliot could be trusted.
There had been a quiet anger in Hardison then and he’d seethed all the way back to the team, ratting Eliot out the first chance he got because he’d been actually terrified of the man that he treated like a brother and yet apparently didn’t know at all. Nothing in his very thorough, and he means very very thorough, background check on Eliot had revealed any kind of connection to Damien Moreau. The very fact that he hadn’t known any of it going in, that Eliot hadn’t had a single tell that gave him away the long months they’d tried to take down Moreau, that Eliot had just let him flounder in the water, that there was something he couldn’t find out, that maybe this was the end of their team for good, was enough to make Hardison furious.
But, of course, that wasn’t what had happened. Eliot had come through for them, protecting them in his own way, thinking some kind of logic through his Neanderthal brain, and Hardison had put it aside, had gotten through a few nightmares of drowning, and had trusted Eliot more than ever. Then this had to happen.
Except this time the reminder of Eliot’s past crimes weren’t making Hardison afraid and angry for himself, but on behalf of Eliot. He shuddered because he could just imagine the way Eliot was looking at his would be interrogator. Hardison knew that voice, knew that dead confidence, and he knew the lack of expression Eliot would have on his face. They weren’t the marks of a man who knew joy, but they were the marks of acceptance and some kind of intent to move on. Hardison wouldn’t want to live like that, but Eliot had to, and now he was exposing that to the team, whether he’d intended to or not.
Hardison found himself clutching his bedsheet and looked down, realizing his entire hand was seizing up.
Eliot’s words were brief and when they were over he was escorted back to his cell and there was silence on the coms. Hardison still sat there, not moving, waiting for something. Finally it came, an annoyed huff as Eliot shifted on his bunk and then, only then, could Hardison move, somehow reassured by the familiar sound of Eliot being irritable.
But it was still a long time before he could sleep, no matter how tired he’d been, a long time before he got back to Nate’s, no matter how urgent the job. He didn’t want the reminders that Eliot was different than Hardison’s perceptions of him. He wanted the Eliot that only pretended he couldn’t be tamed, his real Eliot; though Eliot was always exactly himself somehow, no matter how he acted or who he was pretending to be.
Hardison knew that his Eliot, that one would be writhing in annoyance that the rest of the team had heard what he’d said, and as much as Hardison didn’t want that other Eliot coming out, maybe it was time he gave him a chance so his Eliot didn’t have to feel so bad when he did.
***
Parker had a job to do and when that was the case, she focused on it, blocking everything else out. If she let anything distract her, she might not finish the job and that was unacceptable. The job was who she was, a thief, and the best there was. It was the only thing she could hold on to with certainty.
Parker didn’t listen to half of what was said on the coms and what she did listen to, she barely understood unless it related to the jobs. Sometimes she thought the others were speaking in some kind of code and sometimes she wondered why they were talking about such important secrets so openly, even if the coms were only shared by the five of them.
She liked the times when they weren’t on a job and Hardison’s voice would talk to her before she went to sleep; he would just ramble on about things she had no clue about, but it was soothing and she always slept better. She liked it when Eliot was out food shopping and used the coms to ask her which type of cereal she wanted and didn’t she want to learn how to eat something that didn’t make her act like a five year old. She liked it when Sophie was out somewhere and found something she was so excited about she used the coms to point it out to Parker, like Parker actually cared about what kind of shoes Sophie had found and what a good deal they were. Even if that was the case, Parker would just take them, because good things were there to be possessed, not bought. She even liked it when Nate was down at the bar and started talking to people like they were marks, forgetting he wasn’t on a job because he saw everything as a job.
But when Parker was on a job, the coms were only there as a tool to be used, so she didn’t understand why she couldn’t block out what Eliot was saying. His words pounded inside her head, making it hurt. She didn’t like the implications that Eliot was hurt from his past. Everyone had a past and she knew Eliot’s was likely to be more interesting than the rest of theirs in some ways, but he’d asked her not to ask about it and so she didn’t. Everyone had a right to privacy and to know things at their own pace. Parker lived that way because if she didn’t she would explode. Eliot had his own method of dealing with things and he was just always Eliot, just grumpy Eliot who made her food and hit things that tried to hurt her. She didn’t understand why his past had to make a difference at all.
But it made a difference to him, she could tell, because the tone he was using wasn’t the one he used when he was deflecting Hardison’s invasive questions or Nate’s accusations or Sophie’s gentle prying or her own cluelessness. It was just Eliot, doing what he had to do on the job, which was protect them. She knew he would be mad they were hearing what he was saying, but he was still saying it because it was right for their job.
Eliot knew when the right thing was the wrong thing, or when the way to get something done was the wrong thing and that actually made it right. He was never anything but himself, even if he never shared anything. She knew that and accepted that about him even as he accepted certain things about her. They were the same only sometimes. They were very different the rest of the time, but maybe because he was so far down the road ahead of her. He’d learned the things she hadn’t yet, he’d made peace with his past and she was still trying to understand what hers meant to her.
But when she was confused or scared about who she was or thought she’d never be able to figure anything out, Eliot’s voice telling her that what they were didn’t make them bad, it just made them them, was always what got her through those moments. She’d never been able to get a man home to his wife, but she’d done something else and because she and Eliot were alive they could do something else for other people over and over, and that’s what made them special.
Maybe what Eliot was saying was more than he usually said and maybe it meant something hugely important, but Parker didn’t know what that was. The important thing to her was, it was okay not to know, simply because she was who she was and Eliot was who he was and the team was what they were and she liked things that way.
When she slipped into Eliot’s cell, he wasn’t asleep and he didn’t look at her. That was okay, too, and Parker gave him a jacket, called him a baby, and slipped out again, his rough chuckle echoing behind her.
***
Sophie was still at Nate’s, attempting to explain to herself why she should leave. The longer she and Nate danced around each other while dancing into each other, the more frustrated she began to feel with her life choices. The two of them had come so far and yet it appeared that they were always still at the beginning, still in some kind of chase.
She watched him study the monitors and washed the wine glasses, telling herself to just go and get some sleep. That’s when Eliot started speaking, that’s when Sophie forgot all about Nate really, but it was all part of the same problem.
Sophie was a part of this team, sometimes against her own will. She had tried to leave, she’d tried to treat them like other groups she’d worked with, but there was something different here and it had ensnared her as easily as she’d ensnared any mark she’d ever grifted. She was in the ultimate con perhaps, a woman aware of the fact she was being manipulated, but still somehow unable to disengage from the trap.
There were good parts about being a part of this team. There were people walking around who knew her real name, who knew who she was better than she herself sometimes. That was a true rarity in the life of the grifter and something she’d struggled with over and over. Now, if it were not for the lingering issue of Nate, she’d be almost truly content. There was something there though, something unnamed and unnoticed most of the time, that came from them being who they were, criminals.
It influenced every step of their lives, every part of their connection to each other. It wasn’t just that they broke the law together on an almost daily basis, it was the fact that the only time they’d all tried to leave each other, they’d each come back to the unfinished con, back to each other. None of them could leave.
She’d long ago decided that was a good thing, even if there was so much dysfunction among them. They’d created their own world, one that each of them needed and understood better than any other part of their life. In fact, their lives before were used simply as tools for the here and now, because the here and now was where they wanted to be. She recalled Eliot saying that he would leave the team when he chose to leave it; yet he hadn’t, not even when she’d conned her own crew, his unforgiveable sin.
It had taken him a long time to forgive her fully. Maybe forgiveness wasn’t it. Perhaps it was trust that was the most important thing she’d lost from him. Possibly it took her being broken and running from them that had given him the insight he needed to welcome her back and work so long and hard with her to get Nate out of prison. She was glad, no matter the reason. Eliot was the part of the group she depended on the most, not just to save her life when the marks got dangerous, but to support her and to give practical advice when the rest of them were too emotionally invested and to wrangle Nate when Sophie couldn’t.
Eliot had been the person she trusted the least when they first came together, but he was now the person she trusted the most. Parker was a loose cannon even on her good days, Hardison was hyperactive and unfocused, and Nate, well, Nate was a whole different story. Eliot was their rock, the shelter that kept them from going insane. She could comfort the daily woes and understand the emotions, but Eliot could keep them going from day to day and he did, without question.
So it hurt Sophie to hear him being hurt, because he was. Yes, he sounded stoic and confident and matter of fact on the coms, but she knew it hurt him to remember his past. It was a good reminder for her, if nothing else, because he was so often stolid and calm, she forgot his past. Yet he had to control himself, every day he was the beast he kept locked up inside and it would never go away. He’d told her that before and she’d tried her best not to forget it, but he was so good at acting like it wasn’t there, that it took moments like this one for her to remember truly how much he carried around with him on a daily basis.
Eliot scared her sometimes. Even when she was only acting in a con that he was a brute with savage instincts, she could feel how dangerous he was. She never wanted his anger or vengeance directed at her. His every day ire was something laughable, something that Hardison and Parker poked at with a stick and Nate and she deliberately aggravated, but his true anger, like when she’d betrayed him, was something she was truly scared of.
Despite his constant grouchiness, Eliot was always there and reliable, keeping them safe. Who supported the supporter? Well, Sophie often felt like she carried the weight of them all, but she knew that wasn’t actually the way it was. There wasn’t much she could or would change about the way their group operated, but she made a mental note to support Eliot more when he voiced his opinion and to never show him that she was afraid. He deserved more from her now. He’d proven she was an object of his protection and her first duty should be to be his emotional health. He’d made peace with his past, but there were some things no one could come away from unscathed and what was Sophie if not exactly what anyone needed, even Eliot.
***
It took a lot to break Nate’s concentration. He ignored everything most of the time, his own health, his teammates, everything. He was busy, he was important, he was doing something that needed to be done. Their mark was a sick and twisted, self-important upstart who had to be taken down and Nate would do it any way that he could. He’d put both Hardison and Eliot in harm’s way and he wouldn’t regret it, he couldn’t, not if it got the job done.
Nate had too many regrets as it was, he had to be hard and ruthless against actual evil or he’d spent all of his time regretting, in a downward spiral that would drag everyone around him down with him. So he was relentless and he was merciless and he was sometimes even cruel to the people he loved.
He could admit that, to himself if not to them. He did love them, he did appreciate what they were to him, but it wasn’t something he could vocalize or even come close to showing through his actions. Except perhaps to Sophie, she was, as always, his Achilles heel.
Nate sat down on the couch, rubbing his eyes, listening to the rather soothing sounds of Sophie washing up from her impromptu wine tasting. His brain was still working, but he appreciated the slight break. It was only that reason that caused him to catch what was going on.
Eliot was breaking the interrogator. It was as simple as that. In the situation that Eliot was in, he had to use what he had to be the best unbreakable prisoner there was, and he had a lot. He had more than Nate could even imagine. Nate didn’t think anything sentimental or feel worried about Eliot, this was Eliot’s job and Nate expected everyone on his team to do just that.
But Nate hadn’t always been a heartless bastard. True, he’d always been determined and stubborn, but those weren’t the same things. The combination just made him more dangerous when he wasn’t holding himself in. He could feel emotions, could get overwhelmed, could break down, could make bad choices, and could sacrifice himself for others. He could do all of those things, but they were often pieces on his mental chess board, calculated risks.
This time, Eliot’s words sank in deep and Nate thought about what they meant. They meant that Eliot trusted him to see the more ruthless sides of himself, the sides that he kept hidden and locked away from the others with an obsessive passion. Circumstances had led Nate to be there when Eliot had saved him and the Italian, circumstances only, but Nate wondered if Eliot would have been able to do what he’d done if one of the others had been there. Maybe he still could have saved them, but maybe he wouldn’t have bothered saving himself in the process.
It was something Nate pondered sometimes, late at night when his brain was tired of self-flagellation. Eliot had more reason than most of them to be afraid of what he was capable of and that kind of single-minded purpose could lead to a lot of self-hatred, a lot of being unable to look at yourself in the mirror. Instead it presented as a restless quality in Eliot, something he kept controlled, but something he used to lash out with, to keep people away from what he didn’t want them to see. Something about that experience with Moreau had changed Eliot and Nate knew it was because there was some kind of acceptance, some kind of closure of the evil in his past.
But it had taken evil to accomplish that, it had taken cold-blooded murder, and…it had been done for Nate. Nate took that burden and he kept Eliot’s secret from the rest of the team because it had been done for Nate. That was something he could not fully understand, could never repay, but he accepted as necessary and important. It was always hanging in the air between him and Eliot and their interactions were charged with the knowledge of it.
When Eliot challenged Nate, Nate always heard words that said he owed him his life and the lives of all the men Eliot had killed on his behalf and Nate hated that sometimes. Out of all of them, Nate was the one Eliot shouldn’t have had to save, but he’d done it anyway. Eliot was filthy with wrong-doing, with a past so murky Nate didn’t ever want to know half of it, but Nate felt blackened and wrong next to Eliot and that just didn’t sit right with him. It made him hard on him, made him ignore Eliot’s sage advice, made him lash out at him, made him push him away, but it made him somehow so inexplicably grateful at the same time.
Most of the time Nate wouldn’t even bother thinking about this, but Eliot’s measured and careful words, somehow so open, pushed past his defenses and he bowed his head in his hands for one moment and just let himself be grateful that he knew this killer, this dark soul, who somehow made him lighter, even when he didn’t want to be.
When he looked up again, Sophie was staring at him with an all too knowing look in her eyes and a similar weight of guilt slumped on her shoulders.
***
The situation had not been ideal, not ideal at all. Eliot had brooded about it on his bunk for a while and he’d stiffened with dread when Parker came into his cell. She’d treated what happened with behavior that was so Parker-like that he’d had a moment of relief, but when she’d gone, he went back to dreading the moment when he’d have to walk out of the cell and rejoin his team.
He’d been almost glad for no real reason, as he lay chattering, that Hardison was being himself and that everyone was acting normal on the coms, but the knowledge of what he’d said, of what he’d let them see, kept coming back to his mind.
See, they couldn’t see, they should not see. They were the ones he didn’t want anywhere near his past. He could be violent, he could dish out damage and take their pain and he could growl and be bad-tempered and he could show marks every bit of rage he possessed, but his team, they could not see or it would break him. They had to be protected from him. He was closer to them than anyone on the planet and he loved them more than he’d ever loved anything, but if they ever got past that one point, he wouldn’t be able to keep them from feeling the pain and it was his job to keep that from them, to save them from knowing.
Sometimes there were moments they had to know, things from his past he couldn’t keep them from, pain he had to dredge up to help them in the moment. Nate held on to Moreau for Eliot and it ate away at him, Eliot could tell. There was a certain memory from Kiev that had been mentally transferred to Hardison after he’d been buried alive. Sophie kept the pain Amy’s marriage and his own abandonment of her had caused in him and by him. Parker, she had so many little things, so many little nightmares, all creating one huge mess. These moments were in the way he treated them, the words he said, and the memories he shared because they were already on the table.
But he didn’t want them to have to carry anything. It was his burden, his penance, and he could never forget any of it, could never really share the load. It was simply there. He’d come to his peace about it, a version of peace anyway. He wasn’t under any illusions about what kind of man he was. He was a bad man, but he would do good things and he would do bad things for good people. They were his good people and the one selfish and weak thing he allowed in himself was to not want to see the way they could look at him, the way his marks had always had to look at him in the end.
He didn’t worry about it for long. The con went on, the interrogator tried new things. Then Hardison was taken and that was something completely unacceptable. Hardison was one of the most annoying things in Eliot’s life, but he was one of his people, his very precious people, and Eliot freely added to his list of sins in order to find out where he was. In the end, Parker saved him and Eliot just kept participating in the con, but eventually the moment came when he had to go back home.
Eliot opened the door and everyone looked up. He was sweaty and his head ached and he had plenty of grime and dried blood under his fingernails. He had to look awful. Sophie smiled at him, Nate nodded, Parker ignored him, crunching on something sugary, and Hardison called for him to come and bandage his wounds. Yet there was something in their eyes, he could see the awareness of his confession in their faces. There was also something like guilt, like pity, like resolution. That untwisted something inside his gut, but he didn’t want or need those things. There was nothing they could change that they weren’t already doing. He felt shame, yet stood resolutely and almost proudly in front of them.
“I’m only going to say this once,” he said firmly. “There are some things Hardison can’t hack, things Parker can’t steal, there are people Sophie can’t grift, and times Nate wasn’t chasing me. Who I am is who I am and our crew is what matters. Protecting you is my job, so don’t even think about trying to protect me. Got it?”
There was a single moment of tense silence before Hardison, as usual, broke it.
“You think I wanna do what you do?” Hardison asked. “Look at my ribs, man, look at my poor ribs. Ain’t no way I’m touching your job with any length of pole.”
“Why would I want to be an Eliot?” asked Parker with genuine confusion.
“Nice try, sweetie,” was Sophie’s response.
Nate didn’t say anything, but he lifted his glass of something that was terrible for him to drink in a silent salute.
They were idiots, every one of them, but they were his crew. Eliot went upstairs and took a shower and, when he felt somewhat clean again, put his spare clothes on and came back downstairs where everyone was getting ready to go back to campus to watch Zilgram get taken away. He took over taping Hardison’s ribs, mentally thinking about what he was going to make them all for dinner once they got home.
